WCW meaning in Sports ?

World Championship Wrestling, Inc. (WCW) was an American professional wrestling promotion founded by media tycoon Ted Turner in 1988. For much of its existence, WCW was one of the top professional wrestling promotions in the United States, and was a significant competitor to the dominant World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE), at one point surpassing it in terms of popularity.

WCW was founded in 1988, after Turner Broadcasting System, through a subsidiary named Universal Wrestling Corporation, purchased the assets of the nearly bankrupt major wrestling National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) territory Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP), which had aired on TBS. After initial success through utilization of established wrestling stars of the 1980s, the company appointed Eric Bischoff to executive producer of television in 1993. Under Bischoff's leadership, the company enjoyed a period of mainstream success characterized by a shift to reality-based storylines, and notable hirings of former WWF talent. WCW also promoted multiple live events a year, and gained attention for developing a popular cruiserweight division, which showcased an acrobatic, fast-paced, lucha libre-inspired style of wrestling.

In 1995, WCW debuted the live television flagship program WCW Monday Nitro, and subsequently developed a ratings competition now known as the Monday Night Wars against the flagship program of the WWF, Monday Night Raw. From 1996 to 1998, WCW surpassed their rival program in the ratings for 83 consecutive weeks, threatening to severely undercut their rival and disrupting the American wrestling hierarchy. However, WCW then endured significant losses in ratings and revenue due to creative missteps in the late 1990s, and suffered from the fallout from the merger of Turner Broadcasting parent Time Warner and AOL.

Soon thereafter, WCW went out of business, and the WWF purchased select WCW assets in 2001, including its video library, intellectual property (including the WCW name and championships), and some wrestler contracts. The corporate subsidiary, which was retained to deal with legal obligations and reverted to the Universal Wrestling Corporation name, officially became defunct in 2017. Its headquarters were located in Atlanta, Georgia.